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There is a player in my local BB league who is constantly being called out for many little things: Turning over stunned players at the start of his turn, then going back to try stand them up later in his turn. Constantly rolling dice and waving his hand in the general direction of the board, then announcing that one of your players is injured. Rolling for skills when no-one else can check the rolls.....

...He gets alot of wins against the less experienced players who aren't too sure of the rules yet but there are a couple who seem to be wising up. Some of the older players have tried to have a little chat with him to make him stop but he just seems unable to help himself. Happily, he is an awful player removing the need to chuck him out of the competition

Whoops. I´ve actually done the "extended tape measure on the table" thing. At a mini-tourney.

Not maliciously I should add, and after finishing all guess range and moving for the turn, but I have put an extended tape measure on the table.

I never even considered that it could be used for pre-measuring my next turn. When my opponent asked me to retract it before continuing, I simply thought he was worried about mini´s getting knocked over... Doh.

Might be a good idea to have a thread covering the basic do´s and don´ts of tournament play for us tournament noobs...?

Do's: Have friendly games.

Don'ts: Enter Tournaments.

Heheh, thanks.

Luckily the tourneys here are actually quite friendly. A lot of us know each other from previous gaming, and the guys running the local store usually play as well, stepping in as judges as needed.

I myself organise a sort of 'Christmas Tournament' at our local club every year. Cash prize, food decorations, but I've never entered anything really official.

Movement cheats seem to be the most prevelant that we see out this way. The "Stewie Shuffle" of moving units forward, changing your mind, moving them back ~80% of the distance moved, then repeating until you are half way across the board was a favorite of a particular scumbag at the store. That and the "Long Six Inches" are always troublesome.

The best way I have found to counter this is to ALWAYS take shots even if you know you are out of range. "Ok, my storm bolter is 2" out of range. Cool." If somehow his stealth team hopped 6" and is hitting you with 18" shots, you know he went a tad far. Plus, if you can point out that you know and he knew last turn the range, he is less likely to pull it in the future.

As an aside, I want to back up Frgsinwntr (Frogs in Winter). He came out to our local shop for a tournament, and despite my ass being handed to me, we had a great game, and I probably have lots of bad habits from casual gaming.

mattyboy22 wrote:That's the issue, it is a tournament. Pre-measuring is against the rules and you certainly shouldn't shuffle your models around constantly, especially after moving a different squad......

Can you please point out when he does some illegal premeasuring?
Preferably with a time-index. Keep in mind that premeasuring your movement is allowed.

The issue of having an extended ruler (or Heaven forbid) a precut whippy stick has already been addressed. Like I said in my detailed walkthrough of the videos, I too would most likely have a ruler extended to 12" most of the time or a precut whippy stick if I used the army shown.
Does that make me a cheater? Had he laid the ruler sideways instead of extended forward, would he still be accused of cheating?

I certainly agree that there is way too much shuffling of models on there, but in the end none of the shuffling done has any relevance; movement allowance isn't exceeded and LOS isn't significantly changed (except in the one case with the Warp Spiders).

I am not blind to that fact that this is something we are only able to determine after the fact. Only through the use of the video can we go back and see how far he was allowed to move in the first place.
As such the shuffling is something that should be avoided at all costs. Mainly because it is illegal, but also partly because our opponent doesn't have the ability to go back in time (like we can with the video) and check the facts.


I may sound like I am defending him, but that isn't really the case.
I very much believe in pointing out cheaters and ridiculing them, but I also believe in fairness.
And in all fairness I believe this guy is being used as a scapegoat for all the pent-up and repressed feelings about the Cheaters we never had the balls to call out.

I watched the video last night, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anyone do that kind of stuff. If I had seen him do all this shuffling that he was doing I would have asked him right away to stop it, not because I thought he was cheating, but because it was annoying and slowing the game down.

I kind of agree with steelmage, can someone actually point out where were the instances of cheating? Because I have never seen these kind of shenangins I would like to be prepared for it when it happens.

I mean is it really cheating to shuffle the models like that?(as long as you don't gain extra movement obviously) This isn't chess where if you move your model and take your hand off it your done right?

I'm not defending the guy, mind you, just trying to understand the rage.

GG

Agreed with the two above, I don't see any obvious cheating, except going back to shuffle models after starting with another unit - finish one unit, then move on to another, do not go back to the finished unit

The firedragon thing is hard to jugde when we don't know what happened right before. If that falcon hadn't moved, he could move 8" away from the exit in his turn, and his falcon could also move away (but maybe not go flat out?)

He seems like a slightly annoying guy to play against, he certainly takes his time and goes a lot back and forth, but I see little obvious cheating

i think the biggest thing in the video that bothered me, was his large and small dice where the same color, and I couldn't see any numbers on anyside of any side.... granted its a video, but i can see how they would be hard to read on the table top. His speed and viewing distance when rolling are somewhat suspect. His tape measure and shuffling around of models are suspect. His wound marker on one piece got knocked off a couple of times and who knows what it actually is supposed to say? The thing with the guy in the video is, he does a lot of suspect things, that all together add up IMHO to cheating, no player is THAT clueless, if he's been kicked out of as many game stores as claimed, then he should know better.

The whole thing was shifty. for sure though.

See, this is what I am getting at.

We start to assume he fudges his dice rolls (which I don't believe he does) and that he changes the wound marker (which we cannot see).

I agree he does a lot of suspect thing (the shuffling of models being the most obvious), but lets be fair and only accuse him of things we can actually detect.

Look at his dice rolls.
In the first shooting phase that we see, we have no idea where the opponent is. Is he leaned over the table and looking at the rolls? Has he walked away (for whatever reason)?
In the second shooting phase that we see, we can also see the opponent. He is quite near and shouldn't have any problems following the dice rolls. I can almost follow them and I am looking through an unzoomed shaky video camera!

Mr. Burning wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

malfred wrote:Unexplained phone calls.

Long "drives" out at night.

Unexpected "overtime" but somehow spends less money on you.

Showers when they get home. Inexplicably tired.

Lipstick on the collar. Chapstick on the bum.

Sounds like they could be a doctor though

Hows a doctor going to explain chapstick on his bum?

Chapstick on bum is easy for doctors. It was from their residents... aka their personal *can i say that on here?*

Emperors Faithful wrote:I collect IG and another IG player at our club had been grouping together a 50-man combined squad of Guard AND chucking his platoon command (with medic in tow) in there as well, giving about 55 models Feel No Pain.

I've run into two other people who have done this. One played pre 5th edition, and the other was a good friend who picked up my Codex and had just built an army out of my stuff to play. I think it's just an honest mistake made by glancing at the ability and seeing you can combine stuff and knowing that you can do this weird thing with all these platoons as one FOC selection.

Kirbinator wrote:They show up driving this car.

Thats just freaking awesome right there. I have a feeling if I cheated on my fiance though there wouldnt be writing on my car but a charred frame thats still smoking.

I have faced my share of cheaters. One was using a defiler to fire his battle cannon through three things of terrain, forests, craters and half a building into the squad inside it then insisted they didn't get a cover save 'because he could see them'

Another was a Nid player who would alter the BS of his warriors armed with deathspitters back when they were blast template weapons. He didn't upgrade them as he tolled me but rolled their BS skill as if they were 4, not 2. He would always distort the facing of the scatter die to his advantage even if i had him roll it next to the unit. Another was saying his Ravenors were str 5 on my Berzerkers...later i found out from other players and the Nid codex they are str 4 and he never biomorphs the small units. Lastly he would nudge his gaunts up from the table edge after entering play using without numbers THEN make their table entry move. I managed to call him on a few things and he easily pushed them back but other times he would do some fast rolling and pick up dice i could have sworn were 2's and not 3's. I remove my misses and he would say that i bumped into a dice and turned it into a hit when it was a miss, which i use the crane pickup from above...how the hell can i bump into scattered dice to turn them?

Basically everyone at my FLGS knows of his shenanigans and are keeping a wary eye for when he enters tournament play.

mattyboy22 wrote:That's the issue, it is a tournament. Pre-measuring is against the rules and you certainly shouldn't shuffle your models around constantly, especially after moving a different squad......

I see. BURN THE HERETIC!


@ Generalgrog. Defiler did a run down of the suspicious and flagrant behaviour a few pages back.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Defiler wrote:VIDEO 1

The person in question has his ruler extended at all times. That's pretty flagrant cheating. Just laying down a ruler extended to 6, 12 inches and "doing" something else, coming back to it and picking it up can give you plenty of time to "eye" how long the measurement is.

He also does stuff like leaving it on the table, pre-measuring constantly (holding the ruler over models and then not taking an action with the unit after).

Very old movement trick in measuring, moving the front models and then being very lax in the measurement of the back models, then shuffling one forward and moving a few forward when placing the other models down. It's easy to squeeze extra inches out that way.

The wave serpent and jetbikes were all measure to 12 inches, he then goes flat out with the serpent fudging an extra inch at the end of the move. He measured, then picked up the ruler as he placed the tank.

The bikes then did not move. Honestly not an issue there because their actions aren't impacted by being classified as moving, although that would be worse obviously if they had rapid fire weapons or something.

VIDEO 2

The fire dragons showed up about.... 6 inches outside the tank ... on the opposite side of the exit point.... and then it went flat out back to where it was a turn ago. That one was pretty hilarious no one caught it.

He then nudges the terrain forward jumping with the warp spiders. Minimal harm done. Shuffles them around, but within 12 inches. Sloppy play but not cheating.

The warp spiders, despite not moving their full 12 always had the ruler extended to 12 inches directly towards the death company(?). He used that to determine distance away from models that could potential charge the next turn. Not cheating, but again - borderline.

However, the next move is bringing the Warp Spiders back to their previous spot - then measuring out a similar way to a different spot. Under the guise of "changing his mind while still moving the active unit", he was able to determine the position of an enemy unit down to an inch and move accordingly. That's cheating.

That's pretty much the movement phases. I would have called a judge the second he kept on keeping his tape measure out. That's pre-measuring, and cheating. The sloppy movement fudges and constant moving units back and forth is another form of visual premeasurement.

I feel sorry for the grey-haired gentlemen. but honestly, if you're not savvy enough to beat a pretty obvious cheater, then you're probably not experienced enough to do these kind of tournaments.

Here's a question: Would measuring an angle or two and the distance between two-fixed points on the board, taking those measurements and calculating distance using sin and cos functions on a scientific calculator, and then using that result as your "guess" for a ranged weapon in a game of WFB be considered cheating?

I've only seen it done once before at a pick-up game at my old FLGS. A new level of Math-hammer?

Steelmage99 wrote:
And in all fairness I believe this guy is being used as a scapegoat for all the pent-up and repressed feelings about the Cheaters we never had the balls to call out.

*coughs*
Speak for yourself.

Khornholio wrote:Here's a question: Would measuring an angle or two and the distance between two-fixed points on the board, taking those measurements and calculating distance using sin and cos functions on a scientific calculator, and then using that result as your "guess" for a ranged weapon in a game of WFB be considered cheating?

I've only seen it done once before at a pick-up game at my old FLGS. A new level of Math-hammer?

You are not allowed to measure anything unless the rules say you can. So yes, it would be cheating to measure a random distance.

Magic dice seem to be the most talked about. Usually they're given away by having dice for specific tasks such as "leadership dice", "shooting dice", etc. I believe everyone is guilty of "The Long 6 Inches" at one time or another, usually that's caught though. At my FLGS one of the players saw somebody using water rings (condensation from a cold drink) as measurement markers on the table.

Ketara wrote:

Steelmage99 wrote:
And in all fairness I believe this guy is being used as a scapegoat for all the pent-up and repressed feelings about the Cheaters we never had the balls to call out.

*coughs*
Speak for yourself.

I'm sorry, I do not understand what it is you are referring to. Could you please elaborate?

Had you read any of my posts you would see that I am one of the few people calmly asking for order, instead of just accusing they guy. It just seems to me like a lot of people are make a lot of statements that either; A. Doesn't apply to the game we see ("He is rolling really fast!") or B. Are patently stupid ("It is illegal to have your ruler extended").

The fun/scary thing is when these people are asked to clarify or point out exactly when the "cheating" is happening......they mysteriously stop posting.

Will you be breaking that trend?

Measuring the full distance for a model, and then not moving them, is perfectly valid if you then count them as having moved a total of 0 inches in the shooting phase, correct?

The rulebook clearly states you can measure a move and then choose to not move your models, but they count as having 'moved'.

So if you have say, a uit with assault weapons who aren't impacted by moving, you could measure their moves, deceide against it and mark them as having 'moved' for the purpose of shooting. They of course, wont be affected at all, having assault weapons.

But the rulebook states you can can always measure your move, and then choose to not move at all, but you just count as having moved?

Just curious. I never play in tournaments, so am wondering what people think.

I might choose to move my marines 6, realize that it wont put them behind cover like I thought it would, dont move them at all, and put a marker next to them to indicate having moved for the purpose of rapid fire weapons.

OK I'm really bored so I'll take a crack at breaking this vid down.

VIDEO 1 ANALYSIS

@00:23 he measures move distance for his warp spiders, then doesn't move them. No cheat there AFAIK

@00:38 he moves the walker what appears to be 6" almost totally lateral. He then kind of pushes the walker about maybe 1/2" forward which makes it a true lateral. no cheating there, although certainly a wierd thing to do.

@00:56 he measures distance for some bikes behind a hill, then doesn't move them. No cheat AFAIK

@1:05 he moves two of his seer council what appears to be 12" forward, then he repositions them laterally bout 1". I noticed that he didn't appear to get any closer to the enemy vehicles or any farther away. (really hard to tell in the vid) the net effect was that he moved them about the same. I didn't see anything like moving them closer, if anything he was moving them back some. NO cheat AFAIK

@1:11 he does reposition what appeasr to be a wound counter dice but no way to know from the vid whether he did it corect or not.

@1:51 he measured 12" for his falcon diagonally forward and didnt move it.

@1:56 he goes back to the warp spiders measures again the 12" and then appears to move the first model under the 12" allowed like say 10".

@2:11 he accidentally bumps the first warp spider forward about 1/2" still within the 12" max.

@2:13 This is where it gets a little dicey. He moves the 3rd warpspider correctly then goes back and moves it about an extra inch in front of the 1st warp spider. This is difficult, because if you remember he didn't move the first warp spider the entire 12", and the 3rd warpspider was right behind the first. So even though it looks shady, he only moved the 3rd spider 12".

@2:31 He does this thing with his arm, where he appears to be checking line of sight or something. Possibly using his arm to try and guess range(I don't know what he's doing there).

@2:34 He starts to reposition his warp spiders because evidently he doesn't like something he saw when he did his arm trick thing. Notice he isnt moving them closer but actually moving them back an inch or so. There is no doubt that all of the warp spiders are indeed under the 12" max move.

@2:57 he measures for his rear bikes and doesnt move them again.

@3:21 he measures falcon 12"(exact same spot as before) and doesn't move it again.

@3:59 he moves his falcon 24" in direction he measured 12". I don't see any shenanigans there.

So at the end he goes into the shooting phase.

I didn't see any blatant cheating in that first video. I will comment that his playing style is highly unorthodox and certainly annoying. Also a 5 minute movement phase isn't really that long.

VIDEO 2 ANALYSIS

I assume this is the next turn since, his spiders appear to have done their assault phase jump.

The video starts out with him placing some firedragons, however he is placing them at the front of the falcon. It is really hard to tell but it appears he is placing them 3" away from the point of the falcon? Also he is deploying them from the front of the thing instead of out the rear. There is definately something wrong going on here. I would have called him out on this. (As I thought about this, the video didn't show the begining, so he may have just moved the fire dragons the 8" from the back of the falcon, so this would in fact be legal, the video makes it appear that he deployed them wrong when in fact he probably did it correctly)

@0:26 He measures 24" for his falcon again, then changes his mind.

@0:53 he measures laterally for his falcon and then moves it 24". It appears that he did get an extra inch or 2 out of the move since he was trying to avoid hitting his 2nd unit of warp spiders. TBH I really don't think it gained him anything to do that.

EDIT: I don't haev my rulebook handy, but apparantly you can't disembark, then move flat out(24")?

@1:20 he fidgets with the fire dragons. it's off camera can't see what he did.

@1:24 he does this thing with his fingers to gauge distance for his fire dragons vs the enemy vehicle. Even though I don't think it really gained him anything, I would call shenanigans on this move.

@1:28 He fidgets his fire dragons again. annoying for sure

@2:03 he has his tape measure set at 12" but moves the warp spiders about 8". No cheating AFAIK

@2:38 he measures the 12" and starts to move the 2nd squad of spiders, then he changes his mind.

@3:09 he decides to move the 2nd squad of spiders 12" near the fire dragons.

@3:31 he has allready finished moving his spiders but then goes back and starts repositioning the ones in the back to the front. Definate cheat here, he got about 19" out of that one for at least one spider

(From 3:33 to 5:06 some more annoying measuring and changing his mind.) nothing major worth going into.

@5:06 a full 3 minutes after he allready moved them, he starts moving his 1st warp spider unit again. This is the unit that didn't move the full 12" so he didn't excede is max movement but still anoying to do this.

Then it goes into the shooting phase. Another 5 minute movement phase.


Anyway the main things I saw that he was doing which could be classified as cheating was in the 2nd video:
@1:24 the finger measure thing
@3:31 moving the one spider twice to bring it closer. (definate cheat IMO)

So those videos show all in all 1 definate cheat and 1 cheesy finger measury thingy. All of the rest, I would classify as anal retentive stuff, where the guy couldn't make up his mind or was trying get evrything "perfect".

I definatley would be annoyed by playing this guy, and would not want to play him. But all the internet uproar is abit over the top, based on those videos alone. Now I tend to believe what these guys are telling me when they say that they have played him and he cheats all the time. I however would not use that video to try and prove he was this total cheat becuase the videos really show very little concrete stuff

The videos were educational and I'm glad I reviewed them so closely, becuase I will look for this kind of stuff in the future.

GG

If he moved the walker 12", that was another definitive cheat though, no cruising speed for a walker

Emperors Faithful wrote:Do's: Have friendly games.

Don'ts: Enter Tournaments.

this.

don't need anything more people. it's not rocket science.

tournaments are bad. tournament players are bad.

don't be bad.

Illumini wrote:If he moved the walker 12", that was another definitive cheat though, no cruising speed for a walker

ACK good catch he only moved it 6" I need to go and fix that.. ACK


GG

generalgrog wrote:

Illumini wrote:If he moved the walker 12", that was another definitive cheat though, no cruising speed for a walker

ACK good catch he only moved it 6" I need to go and fix that.. ACK


GG

Good run-down Grog. I skimmed through mine.

I don't think he's an abhorrent cheater, but I do consider pre-measuring, leaving your unit, then coming back to it to be cheating. I guess I have a chess mentality with movement and shooting. Maybe I'm just completely anal retentive and that official tournaments don't have chess rules?

That would explain my issues with
-Leaving the unit you just checked range for, If you check range - you have to move it, or else you can scrye battlefield information out of your "change of heart".
-Shuffling models

also remember that he put the fire dragons X inches from the falcon access hatch. well far away where they should deploy

Howlingmoon wrote:tournaments are bad. tournament players are bad.

Exactly! Exactly!

These videos show to us - with video evidence - that tournament gamers are cheaters. All of them. Not just this one, aot just the guy playing him, and not all the people we see walking on that awful carpet behind them. But all of them, collectively. I'd imagine that if you did a survey of all the people in that video tomorrow, they'd all list their greatest role models as Pol Pot and Stalin. That has nothing to do with the video, but I'm sure it's also true.

So remember folks, tournament gamers are terrorists, cheaters, support dictatorships and have no taste in carpet.

This message brought to you by the Dakka Casual Gaming Mafia - 'Because Winning is for Losers!'

Kurgash wrote:also remember that he put the fire dragons X inches from the falcon access hatch. well far away where they should deploy

Except as I noted it's hard to tell what went on before the video started. It appears that he may be within 8", but it's hard to tell.

GG